December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

picture encryption
by scottb＠aca.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sometime back someone mentioned a program that would hide messages inside a picture, by replacing the LSB of the color with the message. Does anyone know where I can get this?? I was thinking that if they outlawed high strength encryption (non GAK approved), not letting them realize that you were sending encrypted information would be an excellent alternative. Of course the message hidden in the image would be encrypted as well. You could spend many months on trying to break the key, only to find out that it was really only a picture. /sb

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Speaker Wanted
by se7en 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I need someone who can give a speech on Contingency Disaster Planning from November 4-6 in Northern California to the computer security group at NASA AMES. Female speakers are encouraged as well. All expenses would be paid as well as a speaker fee for each individual day. While this is a *one time* event, it may be possible that it would lead to other engagements on a periodic basis both across the US, and infrequently in Japan and Europe. Email me if interested or if you need more information. se7en

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Re: Cybertax
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text MIME-Version: 1.0 Date: Fri, 4 Oct 1996 10:17:00 -0500 Reply-To: Law & Policy of Computer Communications <CYBERIA-L(a)LISTSERV.AOL.COM> Sender: Law & Policy of Computer Communications <CYBERIA-L(a)LISTSERV.AOL.COM> From: Evelyn Brody <ebrody(a)KENTLAW.EDU> Organization: Chicago-Kent College of Law Subject: Re: Cybertax Comments: To: loukidej(a)tor.gpv.com To: CYBERIA-L(a)LISTSERV.AOL.COM The U.S. Treasury Department and other agencies are quite interested in these issues. In September, at a 2-day conference in Washington, DC, on electronic money and banking, Internal Revenue Commissioner Margaret Richardson described the concerns of tax commissioners world-wide about digital currency. Treasury will be issuing a White Paper in the next month or two that will request comments from the public on a range of tax and policy legal issues relating to electronic commerce. These issues will include, among others, permanent establishment, U.S. trade or business, and compliance and enforcement. See the news story in _Tax Notes_ magazine, Sept. 23, 1996, at 1588, by Ryan Donmoyer, "Tax Principles Must Be Applied to Wired Economy, Richardson Says." (A version of this story is also available electronically in LEXIS, Fedtax Library, TNT file (as a new search).) EB --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "'Bart Bucks' are not legal tender." -- Punishment, 100 times on a chalkboard, for Bart Simpson The e$ Home Page: http://www.vmeng.com/rah/

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legality of wiretapping: a "key" distinction
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

reponses to my last post were very illuminating and interesting, and one key point by someone-or-other caught my attention. he made the distinction of "search and seizure" made with the knowledge of the person involved, and "search and seizure" such as wiretapping done without the knowledge of the person surveilled. if one were to try to say that wiretapping was unconstitutional, it seems one would have to define why it is an *unreasonable* kind of search and seizure. and this distinction might be a great, prime candidate: because the participant is *unaware* of the "seizure," there is too great a potential for abuse. it seems to me many people's fears here boil down to this fear of the government surveilling them without their knowledge, of them being denied the right to choose to be in contempt of court and reject handing over information when presented with a warrant/subpoena. (is this a right? is it being broken by surreptitious surveillance?) == I am really amazed that there isn't much case law on wiretaps, which have been around a long time. at least it is rarely quoted here. what exactly is a legal wiretap? has anyone challenged the fundamental authority of the government in making wiretaps in which subjects are unaware of the metaphorical "search and seizure" going on? recent Bernstein and Junger cases are going to be fantastic milestones in our legal system for challenging the cryptographic status quo. I wonder if cpunks might be interested in challenging the wiretap status quo!! it would seem like the first logical step. the FBI has often said they don't want to expand their powers in wiretapping areas. but are those powers they have right now legitimate? if they are not, as many here seem to argue, then they ought to be challenged in court ala the one-man-guerilla attacks like Bernstein and Junger. (any takers? <g>) anyway, I propose that cpunks try to collect all the minutia in the case law about wiretaps and try to make the case that wiretapping that the FBI has enjoyed is itself not legitimate, and therefore any extension of it (such as Clipper) is also illegitimate. == more and more I wonder if this is one of the key differences between libertarian and spook bureacrat's views on GAK, key escrow, key recovery (let us put it all under the heading "key access"). the spooks seem to emphasize that they should be able to get access to communications without giving anyone the opportunity to refuse or possibly even know about such access. libertarians seem to insist that this is a violation of privacy and due process etc. I think there may be a legitimate argument here that might have legal merit that a reasonable "search and seizure" ought to involve the knowledge of the participant, and that unreasonable searches and seizures often do not. hence, wiretapping without suspect agreement may be illegal? (in all the other ways that evidence is obtained through warrants/subpoenas, one needs the cooperation of the suspect?) obviously the government would argue that the cooperation of the suspect is irrelevant and impossible. what exactly does it mean to "present a warrant" or subpoena? is there a right to refuse such a subpoena similar to the way one is guaranteed freedom from self-incrimination?

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Re: DESCrack keyspace partitioning
by paul＠fatmans.demon.co.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Seems to me that a _subset_ of all possible keys is much more likely > to appear than a random selection from an equidistributed population 0..2^56. No, this is not true of a good PRNG > (P)RNG's just aren't that likely to produce a key of 010101010..... > nor 001100110011... etc etc and I have been thinking about how one might formalize > and exploit this randomness property to increase the probability of finding the key sooner. Good PRNGs are as likely to produce these key values as anything else. the reason random looking patterns occur more often is because there are more of them. > Is not the lack of predictability a predictable, and therefore exploitable, attribute? The fact is a PRNG may *LOOK* predictable, ie. 111000111000 but the next bit will have an equal probability of being a 0 as a 1. > Any thoughts here? None whatsoever. Datacomms Technologies web authoring and data security Paul Bradley, Paul(a)fatmans.demon.co.uk Paul(a)crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul(a)cryptography.uk.eu.org Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/ Email for PGP public key, ID: 5BBFAEB1 "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"

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Re: The Right to Keep and Bear Crypto
by paul＠fatmans.demon.co.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Crypto relevancy? Well, the so-called "gun nuts" have already tolerated far > more regulation and restriction of guns than we should ever accept. But if > we use their tactics, can we expect any better results? I don`t know so much about the US law, but here in the UK the problem with the gun lobby and the campaigns against internet controls are purely volume and not technique, there has not been enough done. In the UK now we are looking at a total ban on handguns, within 5 or 10 years all guns will probably be banned, the shit has seriously hit the fan over here, all because of the Dunblane murders (15 or so schoolchildren killed by a nutter with a legally owned (licenced) handgun) The fact is the police fucked up, he was known to be a loner and a child molester and they granted him a firearms licence. In addition the media have played a big part too, I don`t know if the US mainstream paper media is as bad as the UK`s but we have about 5 papers which I wouldn`t wipe my ass on, such as the sun, the mail, the mirror etc. all of which have, at sometime during the ordeal used the exact words below: Gun owners are big children who like to play with dangerous toys All gun owners are dangerous psychopaths They have also described gun lobby activists as "gun toting" and "obsessed with firearms" More has got to be done before the USA goes the same way, I sure as hell won`t be living in the UK much longer if the law continues to change like it has. Fuck them all, that is really all I can say, don`t let it happen to you kids... Datacomms Technologies web authoring and data security Paul Bradley, Paul(a)fatmans.demon.co.uk Paul(a)crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul(a)cryptography.uk.eu.org Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/ Email for PGP public key, ID: 5BBFAEB1 "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"

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KRF_eat
by jya＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

A roundup of press reports on GAK: "IBM, other firms, in data encryption alliance" The consortium was initiated by IBM. "Export controls are a fact of life," said Jim Bidzos. "U.S. To Loosen Computer Code Restrictions" "It's wrongheaded, and it's going backward," Peter Harter, at Netscape, said. "U.S. Export of High-Tech Devices Planned" CDT's Danny Weitzner said U.S. companies' and citizens' encrypted communications sent over the Internet could be vulnerable to "improper foreign government access." The administration doesn't want that to happen and is working with major trading partners and other countries to adopt plans that are consistent with the U.S. plan and to expedite electronic key recovery by law enforcement, the CIA's Deutch said. "IT Execs, Lawmakers Reactions Mixed on Encryption Plan" Rick Cardona, a security technology engineer at security software maker TradeWave Corp., said the law doesn't go far enough. "I think this is part of a trend. It's only a matter of time before the government will allow exports of 128-bit key software." "NCR Corp. Joins Alliance To Develop Exportable, Worldwide Strong Encryption " "We also look forward to the rapid movement of the work of the alliance into an established standards- based consortium body." "TradeWave meets new government data encryption requirements" Although other Internet software security companies have announced their intention to support this new key-recovery requirement, no other Internet Web security software company currently offers this service to its customers besides TradeWave. TradeWave's current customers, which include over 350 electric power companies representing over 70% of the electric power industry, are using the TradeVPI software and services which include this key recovery feature. ----- http://jya.com/krfeat.txt (22 kb for 6) ftp://jya.com/pub/incoming/krfeat.txt KRF_eat

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Re: Fw: Re: ITAR satellite provision
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 08:09 PM 10/4/96 +0000, The Deviant wrote: >On Thu, 3 Oct 1996, Black Unicorn wrote: >[...] >> "A launch vehicle or payload shall not, by reason of the launching of such >> vehicle, be considered an export for purposes of this subchapter." >> >> Focus on "by reason of launching of such vehicle," >> >> Launching a vehicle alone is not export. It takes more than launch to >> make it an export. More than the launching is not much. >[...] >> -- >> I hate lightning - finger for public key - Vote Monarchist >> unicorn(a)schloss.li >> > >So.. if I were to take PGP, put it on a floppy disk, tape it to a model >rocket, and launch it across the mexican border, that's not exporting it >(although the FAA might complain)? That's _my_ interpretation. I look at it this way: Missile launches can 1. Return to the country of origin. 2. Splash down in International waters. 3. land on foreign soil. 4. Orbit for awhile and land "somewhere." 5. Orbit essentially forever. 6. Go somewhere in space other than an earth orbit. All this stuff is obvious to the people who wrote the regulation. In addition, it is not necessarily certain which of these outcomes will occur in any given launch. The terminology in the rule above does not distinguish any of these outcomes. In the absense of further clarification, it is logical to conclude that which particular route the missile subsequently takes is irrelevant to the applicability of the exception. This is particularly true, since the writers of that regulation were free to add clarification should they have chosen to do so. Further, that they DIDN'T "clarify" is logical, because if the outcome of any given missile may be uncertain, and assuming that this regulation was written as a mutual-suck-up maneuver between government and industry, it is reasonable to assume that the regulation would be interpretated to immunize the launcher regardless of the launch's outcome. One can reasonably suppose that Rockwell wouldn't want to be declared in violation of ITAR simply because the second stage of a rocket failed and dropped a crypto-carrying satellite onto China. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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ABA Likes GAK
by jya＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

10-03-96 at 19:09 EDT, American Banker Banks Like Export Plan for High-Power Encryption By Drew Clark ----- "Banks have really taken a leadership role in the responsible management of cryptography," said a senior Clinton administration official who asked not to be named. "Banks are already doing what we want other organizations to do: safeguarding their keys and providing them, when necessary, to law enforcement." "Providing 56-bit encryption with key recovery doesn't help us," said Netscape spokeswoman Chris Holton. "The government is saying that you can export it but you have to provide us with the keys. We feel that is extortion on the part of the government." "We are making the best of a bad situation," said Scott Schnell, vice president of marketing for RSA Data Security. ----- Bank technology experts have reacted favorably to the Clinton administration's proposal to liberalize the development and sale of strong data security tools. This week, the government said it would lift export restrictions on certain kinds of cryptography, provided U.S. companies agree to cooperate with a procedure that would give law enforcement officials access to the "keys" of such codes, upon presentation of a warrant. Banks were heartened by the announcement because many view the widely used Data Encryption Standard - a low-level form of data scrambling - as inadequate protection against the rising computer power of so-called hackers. Though banks can use a complex 56-bit data encryption key for financial transactions, sensitive communications with overseas branches are limited to a less powerful 40-bit standard. Banks hope that a loosening of restrictions in general will benefit them, too. "This policy announcement is better than anyone expected," said Kawika M. Daguio, federal representative at the American Bankers Association in Washington. "It is gravy for us, but it's the meat and potatoes for the hardware and software industries." "Banks probably won't be adversely affected," said Stewart A. Baker, a partner at Steptoe & Johnson, a Washington law firm, "and they will be left pretty much where they were before." The announcement by Vice President Al Gore said that controls over powerful encryption technology would be lifted as the government and private sector develop a "key recovery" system. (International Business Machines Corp. already has stepped forward to head a consortium dedicated to creating such a system.) Current law forbids the export of computer hardware or software that uses cryptographic codes with digital "keys" - randomly generated combinations of 0's and 1's - longer than 40 bits. The longer the key length, the more impenetrable the code. For three years, the government has said it would permit the general use of more complex cryptography only if the companies using it placed their keys in the hands of the government or a third party. "Key escrow," as it is known in the technical community, is needed in order to prosecute people who have stored evidence of illegal activity on the hard drive of a computer, officials argued. But the private sector - banks included - have balked at handing over such access to any third party. The disagreement gave rise to a compromise system known as "key recovery" in which companies would hold their own keys but could be required to divulge certain information about specific transactions when presented with a court order or warrant. "What is novel is that it doesn't escrow any keys," said Homayoon Tajalli, executive vice president of Trusted Information Systems, Glenwood, Md., one of IBM's consortium partners. "If the government comes and gets this data with a court order," explained Mr. Tajalli, "then they take a digital lockbox from the third party or parties that hold it, and they read the message." Kathy Kincaid, director of information technology for IBM, said the difference between key escrow and key recovery is analogous to the following approach to securing a house when its owner goes on vacation: Instead of giving a key to two neighbors, the owner gives each neighbor half the combination to a lockbox that holds the key. "You must have both halves and put them together in exactly the right sequence," said Ms. Kincaid. "This provides protection against a single point of attack." Companies participating in development of key recovery systems include: Apple Computer Inc., Digital Equipment Corp., Groupe Bull, Hewlett-Packard Co., NCR Corp., RSA Data Security, Sun Microsystems Inc., Trusted Information Systems, and United Parcel Service. And a government official said banks may even play a role. "Banks have really taken a leadership role in the responsible management of cryptography," said a senior Clinton administration official who asked not to be named. "Banks are already doing what we want other organizations to do: safeguarding their keys and providing them, when necessary, to law enforcement." Heidi Kukis, a spokeswoman for Vice President Gore, said: "This key recovery system is the proper balance between commercial interests and national security." But not all agree. Some argue that the key recovery system still gives the government too much control over information flow. "Providing 56-bit encryption with key recovery doesn't help us," said Netscape spokeswoman Chris Holton. "The government is saying that you can export it but you have to provide us with the keys. We feel that is extortion on the part of the government." "We are making the best of a bad situation," said Scott Schnell, vice president of marketing for RSA Data Security. "The bottom line is that the standard proposed by the government is an insubstantial step in the right direction," he said. "We want to make sure it is usable and prepare for the day that products will be available that do not have this key recovery situation." The government's announcement came three months after a National Research Council report on the role of cryptography in an information-oriented society. The report encouraged liberalization of government standards and questioned the feasibility of the key escrow system then favored by government. "We raised the issue about the security of key escrow systems," said law professor Kenneth W. Dam, chairman of the body that prepared the report, "and we said the government should work on it." "I take it this is an attempt to move in the way of key escrow, with the help of industry," said Mr. Dam. [End]

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[COMMENT][GAK] "GAK from KRAP"
by Brian D Williams 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

1) Thanks to Phil Zimmerman the world already has "Pretty Good Privacy." 2) Only an idiot, much less one of the 4 Horsemen would get caught using GAK from KRAP. 3) As the FOIA obtained documents from the Clipper I era indicated, the gubmint knows the only way to make this work is to ban other forms of encryption. 4) That and that alone would be "The Shot Heard 'Round the Net." Brian

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